About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Kuwait executes seven people, including a prince

Kuwait has hanged seven prisoners, including a royal family member, according to a statement carried by the state-run KUNA news agency.The hangings on Wednesday were the first executions in the Gulf state since mid-2013. Its neighbour state, Bahrain, also executed three people recently.
Those executed in Kuwait included two Kuwaitis, two Egyptians, a Bangladeshi,a Filipina and an Ethiopian. They were convicted of offences ranging from murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and rape.The Kuwaiti government identified the royal as Sheikh Faisal
Abdullah Al Jaber Al Sabah. He was convicted of shooting to death his nephew, another prince, in 2010 in what was a premeditated
murder. He was also convicted of illegal possession of a firearm.
Nusra al-Enezi, a Kuwaiti woman found guilty of setting fire to a tent at her husband's wedding in 2009 as he
married a second wife, was also executed. During the process she confessed that the fire, that killed 57 people, most women and children, was an act of revenge. The other three men and two women hailed from Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia and the Philippines and were convicted of offences ranging from murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and rape. The Filipina and Ethiopian women were domestic helpers convicted of
murdering members of their employers' families in two unrelated crimes. The two Egyptians were convicted of premeditated murders, while the Bangladeshi was convicted of abduction and rape.
In the Philippines, authorities had earlier identified the Filipina hanged as Jakatia Pawa, who was convicted of killing her employer's 22-year old daughter in 2007. Pawa's brother, Gary Pawa, told the Associated Press news agency that his sister had called early on Wednesday morning, crying as she informed him of her scheduled execution. She asked him to take care of her two children.In a separate interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Pawa said the execution came as a shock as they were hoping that as a result of negotiations by the Philipine government, his sister, would be home soon. He said his sister was innocent.